Sunday, March 27, 2016

Female college students prefer "feminist" political label over the rest

Reuters-Ipsos conducted month-long poll asking respondents to choose one label from a list of twelve that most accurately described how they identified themselves. The breakdown, nationally (n = 9,124):

Label

%Total

Democrat

25.4

Conservative

22.5

Republican

16.7

Liberal

11.2

Environmentalist

6.5

Feminist

5.0

Libertarian

4.3

Socialist

3.7

Nationalist

2.1

Anarchist

1.1

Populist

0.9

Communist

0.5

A few remarks:

- "Conservative" is preferred by more people than "Republican" while "Democrat" is more than twice as popular as "Liberal". I remember Alan Colmes complaining about the toxicity of the descriptor "liberal" when I used to watch cable news over a decade ago. Looks like the label has never been rehabilitated. Those on the mainstream right, meanwhile, still stinging from the neocon Republicanism of the Bush years, prefer the less partisan and more ideological choice as a way of evincing their purity.

- That more than 1-in-25 consider themselves to be "Libertarian" suggests that there are about 10 million adults who identify thus. That's higher than I would've expected, and probably higher than has been the case at any previous point in the last few decades (or, perhaps, ever).

And some additional remarks from playing around with the various cross-tabs:

- Speaking of libertarians, some 15% of white men earning over $150,000 per year (the highest income category available) self-describe as such. In contrast, a whopping 0.6% of Hispanics identify as "Libertarian". A white Republican advocating open borders is politically self-defeating. A white Libertarian doing so is politically suicidal.

- 87.9% of those aged 65 or older (n = 1,953) predominately identify as "Conservative", "Liberal", "Republican", or "Democrat", compared to just 59.7% of those under the age of 30 (n = 1,965) selecting one of the big four. The traditional blanket labels are increasingly being spurned for more focused descriptors. In an atomizing Western world, (superficial) differentiation is relentless. Shared presuppositions are fast becoming a relic of the past.

- Only 0.9% of men consider themselves feminists first and foremost. If that figure (pleasantly) surprises you, it did me as well. There is resistance to the Gelding yet.

- Still, eternal vigilance is recommended. Feminism isn't a moribund 'movement'. It is, in fact, the top choice among female college students (n = 385):

Label

%ColFs

Feminist

21.4

Democrat

19.0

Liberal

10.4

Environmentalist

10.1

Republican

9.7

Conservative

8.1

Socialist

6.2

Libertarian

4.0

Anarchist

2.6

Populist

1.7

Nationalist

1.1

Communist

0.3

Rounding out the top four among the nation's nubile flowers are "Democrat", "Liberal", and "Environmentalist". Learn Game and tame these termagants. Civilization depends on it.

- The buggers are even worse. Among those who are gay/lesbian/bisexual/other, three-fourths choose from "Democrat", "Liberal", "Feminist", "Environmentalist", and "Socialist" (n = 818):

Interesting and well-done poll. Of course, college students have slanted left for a long time, so there's no big news here. I was surprised that about 45% of respondents could be characterized as "rightist" (conservative, Republican, libertarian or nationalist). Higher than I would have expected. About 0.5% called themselves communists. Perhaps they would like to relocate to North Korea for a dose of the real thing. As for the anarchists, an excursion to Syria might be just the ticket to experience their dreams.

BTW, be careful with the "buggers." That term traditioanlly applies only to males, although nowadays I guess anything is posible.